National Institute of Economic and Social Research

Thursday, 19 July 2012

The Supporter's Fear of the Penalty Kick

Like
Marmite you either love it or hate it: the penalty shoot-out. Either way it is
clear - we are not very good at them. Using data from http://www.penaltyshootouts.co.uk/countries.htmlon
95 national teams for 367 shoot-outs (including double-counting of
head-to-heads) we find England is ranked 77th in terms of percent of shoot-outs
won.The only teams who are below England
are countries that have never won a
penalty shoot out. Figure 1 shows the win rates for all countries with at least
one win. England has won just one of six, a 17% success rate. Sixteen countries
have a 100% record, but 11 of these have only ever been in one shoot-out.The shoot-out kings are Angola: they have won
all four of their penalty shoot-outs.

We
can also measure success in terms of percentage of penalties scored. The
picture is similar. With 21 scored from 31 attempts England has a 67.7 per cent
conversion rate. As Figure 2 shows, this
puts England 56th out of the 79 countries for whom we have data, just ahead of four
countries with a 66.6 per cent conversion rate (the Netherlands, Panama, Canada
and Swaziland) and just behind Tunisia. Again, on this measure Angola are the
shoot-out kings scoring all 19 penalties they have taken.

Of
course, not all penalty shoot-outs are the same. The quality of the opposing
team varies by competition and is likely highest among the top ranking teams
who play in the final stages of the world cup and euro championships. So Table
1 presents England's vital statistics alongside those for top teams we like to
compare ourselves with: Brazil, Argentina, Germany and Italy. It does not make
for good reading. We are bottom of the pile in terms of our win rate and our
percentage of penalties scored.The
Germans come out rather well.

Table 1: Performance Relative to Other Top Teams

Nation
N shoot-outs wins losses
% wins N scored
N missed % scored

England 6
1 5 17 21
10
68

Germany 7
5 2 71 28
5
85

Argentina 11
8 3 73 40
10
80

Brazil 11 7 4 64 39
8
83

Italy 6
2 4 33 24
9
73

What
are we to make of all this? In fact, surprising as it may seem, there is a
literature on penalty taking and goalkeeper behaviour. There is some evidence that goalies do better
when remaining in the middle of the goal (Bar-Eli and Azar, 2009) but the most
systematic investigation cannot reject the hypothesis that, conditional on
other players' behaviour, goalies and players behave optimally (Chiappori,
Levitt and Groseclose, 2002). Thus, in the analysis the probability of scoring
is the same whether one aims for the right, the middle or the left of the
goal. Similarly, the probability of
saving a goal is the same whether one dives to the right or the left. Of
course, there is an iron law of football: you must hit the target to score. The
woodwork is not good enough, as the two Ashleys will testify.

But
does any of this matter? I'm afraid it does.
Team losses and draws reduce happiness in rugby fans (Moore et al.,
2007); poor team performance increases group-related hooligan violence (Priks,
2010); and unexpected defeats by a home American football team lead to increase
in police reports of at-home male-on-female partner violence (Card and Dahl,
2009). There is no simple solution; in a penalty shoot-out, there is only one winner.